Most wine lovers quiver over such regal pairings as chardonnay and lobster… Port and Stilton cheese… cabernet and ice cream…

Ice cream?

As if life couldn’t get any better than the divine delicacy of your favorite grape and its culinary counterpart, welcome to utopia. That is, wine ice cream.

Mercer’s Dairy, located in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, has played matchmaker to the vine and the cow. Quite successfully, we might attest.

We were recently given a pint of each of the six flavors for review, thanks to Serendipity Ice Cream Distributors. ($7 per pint online.) Dry Gwen, Bold Lynn and I took on the arduous task of sniffing (very little), tasting (a lot) and spitting (NOT) to bring you the skinny on a dessert well worth every cream-laden, wine-enhanced calorie.

(For the record, a 1/2 cup serving has anywhere between 9-14 grams of fat and 200-300 calories, depending on the flavor, and there is up to 5% alcohol by volume. Sorry, no underage eaters allowed.)

Mercer's Wine Ice Cream comes in six flavors. (Jennifer Podis/The Palm Beach Post)

Peach White Zinfandel
Our first reaction was it tastes like peach ice cream. Very good peach ice cream. And this is a good thing, since none of us is fond of white zinfandel wine. The ice cream has bits of peach in it, too, to enhance its refreshing flavor.

Royal White Riesling
We immediately liked this flavor better, since it actually tasted like riesling. We noted a slight acidity or “zing” to it, plus it’s creamier and richer than the zinfandel.

We loved the consistency, which we likened to that other orgasmic, frozen cream dessert known as gelato. Even better, though, this ice cream is just soft enough to swing your spoon through when first removed from the freezer, thanks to the alcohol content. Think no delays to digging in. (Can I get an “amen”?)

Red Raspberry Chardonnay
What a color! It looks like cotton candy pink. No, make that rosé. What a reaction! “Yum-o” and “ooooh”, to be exact. Spoons down, this is a yummy raspberry ice cream. We could taste a hint of alcohol, but we weren’t convinced it was chardonnay because the fruit was so prominent that it masked any wine flavor.

Chocolate Cabernet
It was love at first sight. The sight of those chocolate chunks in the ice cream. And 9.8 seconds later it was love all over again, at first taste.

It’s said silence is golden. Well, silence must be chocolate, too, because the girls wouldn’t pause from shoveling the ice cream in to make any comments. I think I did hear an occasional grunt, though.

When we finally stepped away from the pint, we whole-heartedly agreed it’s a heavenly chocolate ice cream, again with a tad of wine lingering. Gwen detected a nuance of cherry on the palate, too.

The Cherry Merlot ice cream.

Cherry Merlot
This was another eye-pleaser with a cherry-plum color, chocked with big cherry chunks. But the texture wasn’t nearly as creamy as the others. Nor was the flavor as bold. We didn’t taste any merlot and thought it was a disappointing effort from the ice cream, as well. This flavor turned out to be our least favorite of the six.

Ala Port
Ahh, the gentle color of lavender. Or if you’re Dry Gwen, the color of Smurf.

Outside of Chocolate Cabernet, the Ala Port had the biggest flavor, if not the most intriguing color. We definitely tasted a smidge of Port in this ice cream and attributed that to the absence of fruit. And we got the creamy back in our ice.

When our work (ahem) was done, we gave the highest marks to the Chocolate Cabernet, for its decadent chocolate flavor, and the Ala Port, for tasting most like its wine. Overall, the ice cream itself is delicious and seductive, even if it’s not reminiscent of your favorite wine.

Mercer’s Wine Ice Cream can be purchased locally at Joseph’s Italian Market and Doris’ Italian Market, both in Boca Raton, or online. It’s also available in some local restaurants. Visit Serendipity Ice Cream Distributors for more information.